When Lagos announced employment of graduates as bus conductors

This is what was expected in Lagos, when the government planned to better the lives of unemployed university graduates by providing jobs for them.

But this time, the government offered them the 'wrong' job, which came with disappointment that made the graduates to ignore the offer and the remuneration it promised.

In October 2016, Lagos Ministry of Transportation announced that it would employ 1000 university graduates to work as bus conductors.

Did you say as Bus Conductors?

Yes, they would be employed as Bus Conductors and would be on the payroll of the government with a salary worth of N50,000 per month.

According to the National President of the Bus Conductors Association of Nigeria, BCAN, Comrade Israel Ade Adeshola, the objective of employing graduates for the job is to make bus conducting attractive, respected and dignified as obtainable globally.

However, Nigerian graduates did not seem to believe there is any dignity in working as a bus conductor.

Many of them believe it is ridiculous to study in a higher institution for four or five years only to get a certificate and become a bus conductor on the ever busy roads of Lagos city.

The graduates experiences and encounters with Danfo conductors is not a good one and can't bring themselves to fighting with the louts among the National Union of Road Transport Workers over money or with passengers over balance.

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They will also have to contend with the problems of LASTMA officials on the road.

There is a clear contrast between graduates and bus conductors in Lagos and the government's attempts to bring the graduates into the business was negatively perceived.

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No graduates wants to see himself wearing white singlet on a shot with a pair of bathroom slippers conducting a bus from Iyana-Ipaja to Oshodi. No graduate wants to have anything to do with violent louts called agbero and get scars on his face because it is a government's work.

Nigerian's perception of Bus Conductors is a battered one and everyone expects the government to have reformed bus conducting job before making attempt to bring in graduates to join the business.

Some unemployed graduates would prefer to engage themselves in another job that pay N30,000 or N40,000 than be a bus conductor and earn more.

These are the reasons many turned down the offer because Lagos bus conductors and graduates are not friends. While many graduates majority of conductors as louts and vagabond, some conductors despise everyone who speak English claiming to be a graduate but do not see to have a job.

Where the government got it wrong

Even though the bus conducting job for which the government wanted to employed graduates for is different from that of Danfo chasers in Lagos, the Ministry of Transportation ought to have communicated its innovation to the people and make sure everyone understands its intent before coming out to announce employment.

The government is expected to have made efforts to bring new buses on the roads, hire some students in Lagos State University School of Transport as intern to demonstrate what the graduates would be doing.

If what they see is attractive enough, they would gladly accept the offer to be the good looking conductors of fine buses.

It is only when this happens the graduates would understand the standard of the bus conducting job the government is offering.